Kennedy’s Assassination: The Beginning of the End of Innocence.

50 years ago today, America began to lose its innocence. This is not to say that we were some angelic state of 50 states — far from it. It took us 80 or so years to abolish slavery, another 50 years or so until women could vote. I won’t even address some of the, as I call them, micro-freedoms that people fight over today.

But, in my estimation, the day that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated was the day that bloom began to fall from this American rose.

When I was born in 1972 in suburban New Jersey, the Kennedy assassination was 8 and a half years in the past. In 1979, my family moved from New Jersey to suburban Dallas. We were about 2 months shy of the 16th anniversary.

Many people are shocked to hear of my Texas upbringing. I do make it plain — as do my friends from Texas — that I am not a native. It reminds me of a recent Irish radio segment I was listening to. When you’re born in Dublin & you’re raised in Tipperary, you’re always the “Blow-in from Dublin.” I was always the blow-in from “New York,” so in hindsight it makes sense that I gravitated to historical national events like this.

A note of having been raised in Dallas in the 1980s was that from a tourism perspective, there wasn’t a whole lot to see. There were two places to take people who visited Dallas:

1. Southfork Ranch — This is where the TV show Dallas was based. It was the 1980s after all & JR & Co. were riding high.
2. Dealey Plaza — The Area of the Kennedy Assassination.

I was telling a friend recently about writing this piece & I told him, ‘When any friends would come into town, we’d pick them up at DFW Airport & promptly port them down to Dealey Plaza.” They didn’t build the Assassination museum until 1989, so when we would take our friends & family down there all you could really do was stroll along either side of Elm Street & observe the 3 copper markers in the road denoting the places where the shots hit the President. As I grew older, I came to realize what a maudlin thing this was. It was a pageantry of death.

We made this pilgrimage no fewer than 100 times in my life as kid in Dallas, so it left a real mark in my mind. This man, the way he died & that I grew up in the shadow of his death.

When I left high school in May of 1990, I had been accepted to Emerson College in Boston. When I got there, it was almost love at first sight. I became enamored of the art & architecture of the place. The comparative cultural richness was welcoming to me.
Two of the places I used to visit frequently were the birthplace of Rose Kennedy in Boston’s North End & JFK’s own birthplace in Brookline.

The strong connection got rooted in Dallas & bore fruit in 7 years of living in Boston.

I don’t care much about the controversy about who shot Kennedy. As they say, what’s done is done. But, I’ve become more concerned about what it meant & what the impact was. If you look at the direction that this country was headed, it’s clear to me that his death — much like the burning of the Library at Alexandria in Egypt in 48 BC — set humanity back immensely.

No doubt the Kerouac, beatnik 1950s begat the hippy 1960s. But, social change requires social leaders, too. Kennedy’s youth & aspirations were in-step with the times. And while he was elected with a slim 112,000 vote margin, he did have a substantial electoral gap.

In 2013, as much rumor & innuendo are wedded with the facts we know about JFK, his presidency & his personal life. But, one thing is certain: he was a new age leader. Anyone who’s taken a US Social Studies class since 1960 knows the impact that television had in his election — from the TV commercials to Kennedy’s physical appearance.
I think, more than anything, he was young. He was the youngest President ever elected & the first President born in the 20th Century. He had a young, beautiful wife & family, too. The loss that showed on their faces in the days after his death were as palpable as anything I’ve ever seen.

The very basic tenets of the Kennedy platform in 1960 were to ‘get America moving again.’ There was a sense of things having stalled during the Eisenhower years, in spite of overall economic growth. There was also the serious issue of civil rights in this country to consider. Physical fitness was also on Kennedy’s agenda. All of these are progressive ideas.

One of the very surprising items about Kennedy’s presidency was his overall popularity. During his near 3 years in office, his approval rating was 70.1%. That said, his approval was trending downward when he was killed.

To me the grandest question of all of this is would the Vietnam war have escalated as it did? Would it have lasted as long as it did? The war’s mere existence & escalation set the stage on which most of the 1960s & early 1970s played out.

As a highly decorated & wounded veteran of World War II, Kennedy knew the costs of war too well. It is my thinking that he would have ended what was a limited engagement under him in South Vietnam. Some counter that other aspects of the Cold War raged on under Kennedy, but most of those engagements were highly controlled.

In one sense, there’s something to be thankful for in Kennedy’s murder. The rest of the 1960s generated some of the most amazing cultural contributions known to man. I am certain that while there would have been some level of anti-establishment had Kennedy lived, they would not have been as disenfranchised as they were. In other words, Woodstock, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix & the rest would not have had the rebellious bedrock in which to plant a flag had Kennedy lived. The excesses of the 1970s & 1980s might have been tempered had Kennedy lived, too.

There’s not an American who was alive who doesn’t recall exactly where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. This tragedy cut a swath of misery through people of both parties. The stories people tell you about that day are chilling. They’re on par with asking someone where they were on 9/11.

Tragedies of all forms take pieces of ourselves — our hearts, minds & souls. 9/11 did that to me and those who I know who were directly impacted. When you lose someone of Kennedy’s importance, you lose so much more. You lose faith in the system. You lose faith in humanity. You lose faith in a world that can create such hate — enough to kill a man.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not one for demagoguery and Kennedy was no saint, either. We do all have to put our pants on one leg at a time. But, not everyone’s pants are hitched by suspenders that carry the weight of the world. So, when things like this happen — especially to a man whose ideals seemed so genuine in nature — it reduces us, all of us.

One of the greatest aspects in which this event impacted American culture was public skepticism of the government. Many people do believe that there were other forces at work here — the CIA, the mob, the Cubans or the Soviets. This was really the first time Americans wondered aloud about the legitimacy of those in power. This kernal of distrust grew after the assassinations of MLK, Malcolm X & RFK. The cup of distrust overflowed in the wake of Watergate.

I stop short of saying that these other events would not have happened had Kennedy not been murdered, but I do think it started a chain reaction that took us right up to today. Had Watergate not been the story it was, it’s conceivable that a President giving sexual favors in exchange for promotions or access would not have resonated either.

Events like this have a chilling effect. That is the intent of those who perpetrate these things. This is the man who helped usher in civil rights. This is the man who formed the foundation of The Peace Corps. This is the man who inspired millions of men & women — myself included — to do good in their lives.

“If someone like him can get cut down, what chance do the rest of us have?” some say. I prefer to say, “If it weren’t for the likes of him, where would we be?”

Do good today. It’s the most assured way to pay homage to an imperfect man with perfect dreams.